Ant Financial Services Group, the financial-services affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., closed the world’s largest private fundraising round for an Internet company at $4.5 billion, giving it a roughly $60 billion valuation.

Admittedly, the permeable layer between state and private money in China (the Ant round contains government money) has an almost steroidal effect on funding rounds there making it difficult to treat U.S. deals on an "apples to apples" basis. That said, the largest round for a U.S. company was the $2 billion equity round that Uber pulled down from, not-so-shockingly, Chinese investors in January.

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We can only imagine that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who's interest in venture capital borders on the vampiric, is likely sitting somewhere obsessively ruminating about building a $5 billion Series W round in the coming weeks...giving him ample capital to build his army of robot cab drivers and create chaos on the streets of San Francisco!